


From a Safe Distance

by Lyrstzha



Category: Firefly
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Character of Color, Gen, Grief
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-07-02
Updated: 2006-07-02
Packaged: 2017-10-05 15:47:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/43323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lyrstzha/pseuds/Lyrstzha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Ain't nobody or nothin' can touch you if you ain't here to be touched." After Wash's death, Zoë is an absence of presence more than anything else.</p>
            </blockquote>





	From a Safe Distance

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lunabee34](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Lunabee34).



Mal, pushing the protesting Alliance medic aside wearily, staggers stiffly up from his sickbed on the first day to go pry Wash from the pilot's chair. He doesn't say a word about where he's headed, but Zoë rises from her cot and follows him silently anyway.

It takes them a good hour, but they finally manage to find the leverage between them to pull out the harpoon. It gives with a slick rasp that isn't any better for being familiar, and it doesn't come cleanly. Zoë reaches out with hands that do not shake to fold the inner secrets of her husband's body gently back into place. Her fingers smooth over the ragged gape in his chest rhythmically over and over, as if to wear away the jagged edges by persistent erosion. Her face doesn't move; it isn't even immutable stone, only simply a blank void, a hollow, a negative space.

Mal doesn't ask her if she's all right.

*********

They had been three days dying in Serenity Valley, Zoë remembers, when Mal turned to her and peered searchingly into her unruffled face.

He'd croaked in a dry, parched voice: "You still in there? Can't go crazy on me now, Corporal. Ain't no unit left but you an' me."

And she'd cocked her head at him, as if he were very faint and far away and she had to listen carefully to hear him at all. "No, Sir," she'd finally answered, low and even. "I ain't here right now. Don't think you should be neither. Ain't nobody or nothin' can touch you if you ain't here to be touched."

He'd frowned at her. "How you manage that, Zo?"

"Can't be in two places at once, Sir. Be someplace else so hard that that's all there is." But Zoë didn't really think he'd ever actually master that; he was too much in the moment, held on too fiercely to everything.

But her, she'd spent those days in the hammock she'd slept in as a little girl, a net of bright colors woven from dyed hemp that smelled of green growing things, which swung in a corner of her parent's bunk. Her father had rocked her in the evenings, singing old worksongs softly in a voice which wasn't melodious at all, but was exuberantly off-key in a way that made his songs comfortable and warm and easy, like a house where you wouldn't be afraid to put your feet up on the sofa. Every night she'd drifted asleep to the sound of those songs and the warm shape of his calloused palm rubbing between her shoulder blades.

***********

At first they all hover awkwardly around Zoë, uncertain what to say to her but wanting to offer _something_. Mal is the easiest; his presence is like the worn groove on her trigger finger: familiar and natural. He stays near but doesn't try to touch her, and when he does offer words, they're casual and uncomplicated—only an easy wade through the shallows of speech.

Kaylee is the hardest, because she tries more than anyone else to be comforting, tries to breach Zoë's calm with tears and regret. But even Kaylee seems to find her relentless imperturbability unnerving in the end.

*********

"I can't hear you," River says one evening, unexpectedly.

"Didn't say nothin," Zoë answers offhandedly.

"No," River insists, staring intently at Zoë. "I can't _hear_ you. If I close my eyes, you aren't there." She reaches out a hand, feathering cool fingertips faintly against Zoë's brow. "Star burns so hot it falls in on itself. Makes a quantum singularity, so dark and deep not even light escapes. If you drop a coin in that well, there's no splash." And she frowns at Zoë sadly, her fingers still whispering over skin.

Zoë reaches up to push River's hand away firmly, and says only, "Rather you didn't touch me now." She turns her back and walks away with even, measured strides, the heels of her boots making hollow echoes with every step.

"Watch the burn on re-entry from the black," River calls after her.

*********

Normally she's aware of the tides of her body as steady, reliable background noise, but now it takes Zoë three weeks to notice that her blood doesn't come. She's just lying down to sleep when the realization hits her with a cold, surprising jolt. At first she simply lays a hand across the muscled curve of her belly, staring down at it blankly.

And then she's drawing in a deep, shuddering breath so hard that it burns her lungs. Terribly, suddenly, the world snaps sharply back into focus as if she's surfacing from a deep dive or struggling awake from the clinging grip of a dream.

This, this she has to be here for. As much as she'd wanted it, as glad as she'll be later that some part of Wash is cradled inside her, all Zoë can feel now is the weight of this dragging her back, making everything real. In the morning she'll go to Simon, let him check her over, ask all the right questions. She'll plan and talk and move and think and walk in the world again.

But tonight she curls across her bed like a cut ribbon, crushes a muffling palm across her mouth, and screams into it until her throat bleeds.


End file.
